I like this challenge. Weird, since I am pretty much the one person who would do anything to get out of sports. Like when I got to junior year, I got to quit PE and could pretty much use the extra hour for anything I wanted – do homework early, catch up, or if I didn't have anything to do – go on YouTube!

Thanks for reviewing, Gage the Hedgehog (did you not like it?).

We got a break the next day, as usual. However, Chris had warned us that the next two challenges would not have a break between them, but it wasn't so bad. The next two were reward challenges, to make up for the war, bank heist and period movie challenges all being eliminations. That meant we could afford to slack off a tiny bit.

Most of us, with the exception of Beth, awoke to the new challenge two days later from the sound of a trumpet. Beth was sleepwalking, twirling Courtney's PDA as she did so. Courtney had to grab it off her as the smaller girl woke up.

"I'm so sorry!" Beth gasped. "I must've started sleep-twirling again."

"Did she say sleep-twirling?" Leshawna repeated.

Courtney glared. "That PDA is my legal right in this game. Touch it again, Beth, and prepare to be served!"

At that moment, we all got served...with balls of pasta for breakfast. According to Chris, it was carbo-loading for the sports movie challenge.

Awww, sports movies? So boring. And I knew that it was going to be just like gym class. First, we had to do a 3 kilometre run to astroturf. Then we had to push sweaty Chef the length of the field.

"We've gotta push spiced-up Chef like he's a football dummy?" Justin repeated.

"Don't call me a dummy." Chef warned.

I gave a sigh. "Fine. Let's do it. Pushing a football dummy, pushing Chef...not much difference. I'm just going to have to sweet-talk Courtney into letting me use her private bathroom so I can shower properly."

"Take it up with my lawyers." Courtney said coldly. "That bathroom is mine. I don't remember anything in the contract about letting anyone borrow it."

I shrugged. "Whatever."

That wasn't the only football drill we all had to do. Actually, most of the drills weren't normal. Like hopping tyres, and crawling under spiky wire in the mud.

"That truly bit." Duncan remarked.

"Who won, anyway?" Courtney demanded.

Chris consulted his clipboard, muttering equations as he calculated the results. "Nobody!" he finally said.
"Huh?"

"It was just to establish who's playing who in the real contest to follow." He gestured to the scoreboard screen, which showed stick figures punching, playing tennis or something, fighting, and throwing a ball. "We're running four sporto contests, with competitors seeded according to these results." Our faces appeared, with us on one side, the Grips on the other. My face appeared third from the top, and it looked like I'd be facing...Beth? Huh, okay. I could crush her. She didn't do that well under pressure, anyway.

As it turned out, the stick figure punching meant that the first contest was boxing. Apparently, the two facing each other first did the worst in the drills. So that meant our most unathletic player was Harold, and he was up against Lindsay.

But this boxing match wasn't normal. Chris said they had to do it in slow motion, and they had marshmallow boxing gloves. "Props, so you don't hurt those pretty actor faces."

Harold's slow motion was awesome, but Lindsay was fiercer. She even bit into one of Harold's boxing gloves!

"Don't eat it!" Courtney yelled from the sidelines. "Play dirtier!" She noticed Duncan looking at her. "What?"

"I like when you talk like that."

I pretended to gag, and then whispered to Duncan "When you get back with her, experiment. Bet she'll love it if you talk like that to her."

"Oh, trust me, Stephie, I've got a lot of experimenting to do." Duncan grinned back.

Lindsay knocked Harold to the ground in the second round (announced by Chef in a purple bikini – ew). But Chris declared him the winner. We all cheered.

"But I knocked him out!" Lindsay protested.
"He gained a bunch of extra points for doing such great slow motion." Chris grinned. "And I had to dock you for biting. Very unsportsman-like, Ms Tyson."

Lindsay scowled. "This was fixed!" Her team had to hold her back.

I hadn't done that great in the drills, but I had beaten Beth in those. We were up next, and it turned out that the rackets with the stick figures weren't tennis rackets – we were playing badminton.

Yeah, I was better at tennis, unlike Dad. We had a tennis court for awhile, and our neighbours loved coming, because Dad was so lazy and Mom couldn't take on two players alone. I remember. Mom was telling us that Sideshow Mel said that we would never know how they made fun of us. But anyway, Dad made me and Lisa learn the game, and we got pretty good. But badminton? I wasn't sure.

Chris decided to show off. He'd been in a movie called Goodminton and did a...well, I'd call it meh...recreation of one of the scenes.

I smirked at Beth. "You think you can take me?"

"You can do it, Beth!" Courtney called.

But Beth looked worried as Chris tossed her a stuffed bird to use. She dropped it when it squeaked. "It's alive!"

"It's stuffed." Chris told her. "With a squeaker. That okay, Chicken Little?" He threw the bird to me. "Serve to Stephanie!"

For awhile, I was leading.

"Bring it!" Leshawna yelled to me. "Show her who's in charge!"
"That's right, Stephie! No mercy!" Duncan called out.

"Serve her up a hot steaming bowl of humiliation!" Harold joined in.

To be honest, I blame Leshawna for losing us that round. The next thing she did was call to Beth "Your chances of winning are just about as real as your boyfriend!"
And wow, if that was true, then Beth really did have a boyfriend. She suddenly went into crazy mode and I couldn't have won, no matter what I did. You should've seen her.

The Grips all cheered.

I didn't congratulate Beth, but I managed to smile bravely.

"You got game, girl," Leshawna conceded, "But you still don't have a boyfriend."

And then, that was when Beth turned on her. "You just resent me for being a champion baton-twirler! Just like you resent everybody here!"

"Excuse me?"

"Why don't you admit it?" Beth scowled. "Or should we have Courtney play what you said about all of us on her PDA?"

"I told you to stay away from my PDA!"

Beth ignored her. "It's on the Total Drama website, Leshawna! Everything you said about all of us when you went on that spa night!"

We all gasped.

"You said mean things about me?" Lindsay said.

"Lemme see, lemme see!" Harold insisted.

"No!" Courtney refused. Well, that was until Duncan tried to persuade her, and Courtney relented, saying "Only because I think you all have the right to know what she said."

"There's nothing to see! You guys will be bored!" Leshawna protested, but it was too late.

Courtney was playing the clip, and Leshawna was with her cousin, talking. She'd just finished talking about Heather. "Just mean for the sake of being mean." But then, it went on to people here. "Lindsay has half a brain cell, max, and it's usually gone out shopping. Oh, oh, problem with Justin's giant ego! Duncan likes to think he's a bad boy, but when Courtney was there, she basically dragged him around by his eyebrow ring. Stephanie thinks we admire her quips, when it just makes her seem like a spoilt rich brat." I gasped, but I tuned back in long enough to hear the end of it. "Beth actually wears a side ponytail. A side pony! And Harold? Dang fool's sweet on me, but he's getting about as much play as an old-school cassette tape in a world of MP3s!"

The Leshawna on the screen and her cousin burst out laughing, and Courtney switched the tape off.

I was the first to whirl around and glare at Leshawna, who desperately tried to defend herself. "You don't understand! That was outside the game! I didn't know anybody would see it!"

"So you weren't just joking?" Lindsay said. "I thought maybe you were joking."

Nope. No matter what, there was no way Leshawna could win back our respect. I'd forgiven her for fake-crying her way to the reward. She'd earned it, after all. But trash-talking about all of us? Yeah, and oh, by the way, I don't quip to be admired. I quip because I feel like it – and yeah, maybe I am spoilt, but Leshawna herself was pretty outspoken. If I'd gotten that spa night, would I have told Bart that she was way too blunt, too loud, and had a short temper? No way! But she was absolutely happy to bad-mouth me to her cousin who I'd never met?

Scratch that friend off my list and consider if I should kick her off before Harold (Later on, I found out that after watching the Aftermaths, had Heather been there, she would've been the only one not angry, because in her opinion, Leshawna was just telling it like it is).

But it was time for the next challenge. This time, it was Duncan vs Courtney.

"He shoots, he scores!" Duncan cheered.

This I had to see. Both of them had to wear basically their swimsuits. The fighting icons symbolized that these two would be...wrestling. In a kiddie ball pit. Yeah – and I'm pretty sure Chris was making some kind of reference to the adults watching, that "wrestling in balls" also meant wrestling nude.

"Now play ball!"

The two of them dived into the pit. Courtney came out on top of Duncan, one leg wrapped around his chest and her arms around his face. "What's the matter, big boy?" she teased. "Can't swim?"

When they found a diaper in the pit, Courtney shoved it into Duncan's mouth, and I was instantly glad I hadn't been up against her. Maybe she'd only been second in her team in the drills, but she was definitely the toughest. "Come on, tough man!" she kept teasing Duncan. We couldn't help laughing.

Duncan spat out the diaper. "That's it! No more Mr Nice Guy!" He made a 'come at me, bro' motion, and Courtney knocked him down with one kick, pinning him down.

Duncan made one last attempt and got free, but got distracted, giving Courtney just enough time to get him in a headlock. He surrendered.

"In your face, Duncan!" cried Courtney. "I am the world champion ball wrestler!"

Justin and Leshawna were last. They had to do as creative a slam-dunk as possible. Sadly, at this point, I almost wanted Justin to win. Leshawna herself looked as if she wanted to just disappear, but she executed a pretty good slam dunk, getting Justin as well as the ball through the hoop. Well, it got us to two-all.

I managed to say "Pretty good slam dunk." to Leshawna. But then I added, "But I'm really going to have to think hard about whether I still want you in the game if we go back to elimination at the end of the week." Although I knew the merge was approaching, which meant that I'd probably have to get rid of Leshawna anyway. Only after Courtney, though.

Our tiebreaker was cheerleading. Chris explained what we had to do. "Each team's gotta dig deep, and create a cheer for someone they think deserves cheering."

The Grips instantly went into a huddle.

"Ooh, ooh! I got it!" Harold exclaimed. "Let's cheer for Norbert Swinlow." He saw our blank looks and said "The inventor of the pom-pom. Duh."

I rolled my eyes. "Lame. Why don't I just suggest we cheer for Heather or something? How many people do all of us know who really deserves a cheer?"

"Hey, while we're fighting, they're working on whipping our butts!" Leshawna snapped, gesturing at the team.

And Chris wanted us to go first. We were lost for words.

But none of us was as surprised – or pleased – when Leshawna began a cheer. She was improvising it, but it felt like a winning cheer. "Courtney, Courtney, she's my pal! She loves her PDA, she's an organized gal!

Lindsay and Justin might be dumb, but I'd be so proud if they called me their chum!

Steph'nie, Steph'nie, smart and goth, with a heart of gold, maybe, but she ain't soft!

Duncan and Beth, they're quite a pair – he's tough, she's goofy, but they both got flair!

And Harold's the best, he's quite a guy, he's goofy and scrawny but he's got my eye! WOO-OO!"

And with just five rhymes, Leshawna had almost redeemed herself. Did she really think I was smart and had a heart of gold deep down? It didn't mean she didn't think my being witty made me seem bratty. It could be true. I would have to talk to her after the challenge.

"That was either the coolest thing, or the dorkiest thing I've ever seen." Harold stated.

"Cool or dorky, it sounded unbeatable to me." I said. "Beat that, Grips!"

Honestly, it was so unfair. We should've won. The only reason Chris declared the Killer Grips the winners was because their cheer was for him. Smart move, yeah. But not fair on anyone else. So they got the reward, and we lost, yet again.

I had a serious talk with Leshawna afterwards. "I know I shouldn't have said all those mean things." she admitted. "But listen, I meant all the nice things I said even more!"

"But you did mean all the other stuff?" I challenged. "But I don't try to be witty to get attention. I do it because that's who I am."

"Okay, so I meant that." Leshawna said, looking ashamed of herself now. "But I swear, I didn't mean to hurt anyone! I needed to vent while I was out of the game, and I guess it sounded a lot worse than I thought. But I swear, everything I said in that cheer was true."

I paused. "And that brings me to one more question. If you like Harold that much, why won't you give him a chance?"

"What kind of question is that?" my she's-probably-my-friend-again said, looking annoyed. "Harold and I are just friends. And that's all we'll ever be. Case closed."

Well, what could I say? I couldn't force her to talk about it if she didn't want to.

I figured that Leshawna might actually attack the part of Stephanie that is actually quite close to her own flaws, but she also praised traits that they both possess – a heart of gold.